What would happen if brazillian pilots have been charged at US?

That wouldn’t happen, because we don’t criminalize air accidents in the US.

I see that you’ve left the “private pilot” put-down in place, so I still won’t read the rest of your piece.

Oh, and you’ve added the information that Langeweische can “churn out” something you refer to as “magazine prose,” assumedly a lesser form of creativity that I must admit I too “churn out.” Thanks for that.

But for what it’s worth, I’ve been involved in quite a bit more than flying “an automatic airliner between point A and B”, but even that is exactly the relevant experience if we’re talking about an airline accident (GOL) and at least one of those two points are in South America. I’ve flown many general aviation aircraft, many light corporate aircraft, the F/A-18, SA-227, EMB-120, 737, 757, 767, A319, A320 and 777. I’ve been an accident investigator, air safety representative, and have testified before Congress on air safety. I’ve flown aircraft in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Hawaii and Asia. I have well over 10,000 hours and will put my qualifications up against anyone, be they an airline pilot, private pilot, or a “commercial pilot who has flown a variety of for-hire operations”. I can’t churn out 8 pages of magazine prose for publication, but then neither do I claim to be able to.

But that’s really not what’s important. If you take issue with any of the facts in my guest post, please let me know. Otherwise, you can tell William that I was wrong – he is not a private pilot, he is a commercial pilot without sufficient understanding to properly analyze the accident.

And, incidentally, his father Wolfgang Langeweische wrote “Stick and Rudder,” perhaps the single most admired book ever published on the techniques of flying. Not that it matters, but I hate to see some aerial busdriver refer to William as “a private pilot” when Langeweische has been seriously and professionally involved with aviation since our “expert” was in kindergarten. Or, if you count his family, since decades before the guy was born.

Stephan Wilkinson

Which is why the NTSB recommended that the TCAS off indications be upgraded to a higher warning level.

Then, Bystander wrote “you would expect that the Excelaire pilots would be very familiar with these indications for that particular loss of function as they have been trained on it since beginning to fly TCAS equipped airplanes.”

Why do you have an expectation that these pilots had been flying Legacy aircraft since they were trained to fly TCAS airplanes? Regardless, if you think pilots are specifically trained in “TCAS off” identification, then you haven’t been a part of any serious pilot training.

Bystander wrote, “If changes are needed to the warning then the issue should go to the world regulatory agencies for review and action”

Again, that’s exactly what the NTSB recommended. Just because it hadn’t been recommended before doesn’t mean it wasn’t relevant – a better warning would have prevented the accident, period.

Bystander wrote, “Adding new aural warnings to a cockpit is not a small undertaking and demands that appropriate study & engineering be completed.”

Small compared to the engineering work for EGPWS, takeoff configuration warnings, etc. A better warning would have prevented the accident, and the work is definitely worthwhile.

Your next comments are non-starters – they aren’t in the same league as missing a small TCAS OFF flag at the bottom of the PFD. Let’s look at them:

“Would it be OK for them to run out fuel?”

That would be a failure of planning, plus the blatant disregard of many warnings (including aural) onboard.

“Land with the gear up?”

It’s pretty hard to inadvertently raise the gear by putting your foot in the wrong place. Plus, then you’d have to land despite the EGPWS saying “Too Low, gear”, and the gear warning horn.

“Fly past a waypoint and not contact ATC for almost an hour?”

That happens all the time – I did it a couple of days ago over the ocean. But if you’re referring to what happened on the accident flight, it was only about 30 minutes before they actively started calling ATC, and they had answered every call previously.

I guess what I’m saying is that yes, it should be like the examples you stated. It should be just as hard to fly around with the TCAS off as it is to run out of fuel or land with the gear up. But it’s many orders of magnitude easier to accidently turn off the TCAS and not notice. That’s definitely a problem.

Actually, the cockpit indication of TCAS OFF exceeds the existing international requirements, and you would expect that the Excelaire pilots would be very familiar with these indications for that particular loss of function as they have been trained on it since beginning to fly TCAS equipped airplanes. If changes are needed to the warning then the issue should go to the world regulatory agencies for review and action. Adding new aural warnings to a cockpit is not a small undertaking and demands that appropriate study & engineering be completed.

Accepting that it was OK for the Excelaire pilots to mistakenly turn off the TCAS function is ludicrous. Would it be OK for them to run out fuel? Land with the gear up? Fly past a waypoint and not contact ATC for almost an hour?

Congrats to Cranky and his guest writer, for criticizing Vanity Fair for its absurd behavior. I suggest all Cranky readers and fans should go there ans protest:

http://www.vanityfair.com/contact/emailLetters

regards,
Carlos Valle
Curitiba, Brazil